Kyle Mantyla's blog

Glenn Beck opened his radio program today by continuing his defense of the recently passed Indiana law that allows business owners to discriminate in the name of "religious freedom" by warning that attacks on such laws will lead to people being placed in concentration camps and killed.

Declaring that "gay activists will boycott, will make it uncomfortable, they'll smear them, they'll just ratchet up the hate" against any business owner who refuses to provide services to a same-sex wedding in an attempt to drive them out of business, Beck insisted that everyone just has to "heal our hearts" and realize that religious business owners are not motivated by hate but rather by their faith.

"Let's stop forcing each other to do things," Beck begged. "You don't change anything. That ends up in concentration camps. You just start grinding and grinding and grinding away until you're in separate worlds and nobody talks to each other and then, whoever has the power, round 'em up and kill 'em because those guys are the problem."

"That's how it happens," he said, which prompted his co-host Stu Burguiere to quip that Beck managed to make it a mere fourteen minutes into the radio show today before he started warning about people being rounded up and locked away in concentration camps:

The American Family Association is calling on its activists to cancel their subscriptions to Angie's List because the company opposes Indiana's newly passed "religious freedom" law.

Radio host Peter Heck says that criticism of Indiana's law "is the reincarnation of a neo-fascist view."

Matt Barber declares that criticism of the law is all about focing "the affirmation of homosexual behavior and the homosexual lifestyle and to do away with any public exercise or representation of Christianity."

Cindy Jacobs will be taking her prayer warriors to New York City next month because a great economic "shaking" is about to occur.

Larry Tomczak warns that "opposition to Christianity is becoming more aggressive and hostile. Nowhere is this more evident than in the areas of natural marriage and sexual purity."

Finally, for $60 a year, you can get "exclusive" access to daily audio and weekly video commentaries from Mike Huckabee!

On his radio broadcast today, Bryan Fischer seized upon a news report that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot who is believed to have deliberately crashed a German flight last week, killing everyone on board, had "trawled gay porn websites and sites relating to suicide" to raise the possibility that Lubitz's alleged homosexuality may have played a role in the crash.

As Fischer explained, "it's striking that one of the health risks that's associated with homosexual behavior is an increased risk of suicidal ideation ... Now we are discovering that, perhaps, [Lubitz] was involved in homosexuality, was taking drugs for depression, and perhaps that would explain his suicidal crash of that plane":

Lubitz had a girlfriend at the time of the crash, a fact that seemed to be lost on Fischer, who has suggested in the past that homosexuality is a chosen behavior rather than an innate orientation.

Right-wing megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress spoke at Liberty University's convocation this morning, where he told the student audience that America's complete collapse was unavoidable, thanks to Supreme Court rulings banning organized prayer and Bible study in public schools, legalizing abortion, and striking down bans of gay sex.

These rulings, Jeffress declared, have "so weakened the moral and spiritual infrastructure of our nation that our collapse is inevitable," explaining that the 9/11 terrorist attack was God's judgment upon America for the sin of abortion.

"All you have to do is look in history to see what God does with a nation that sanctions the killing of its own children," he said. "Just look at the nation of Israel ... Because they got involved in the worship of Moloch, the pagan god, and they sacrificed their children on the altar, what did God do? He raised up the godless Babylonians and Assyrians to bring judgement on his own people."

"People ask me all the time," Jeffress continued, "'Well, I just don't understand why God wouldn't protect our nation and he would allow these radical Muslims in 2001 to kill 3,000 of our citizens and why God doesn't protect us. Surely, God doesn't use pagans to bring judgment upon his own people, does he?'"

"Just read the Bible," he said. "God will not allow sin to go unpunished and he certainly won't allow the sacrifice of children to go unpunished":

On his radio broadcast yesterday, Glenn Beck weighed in on the controversy surrounding Indiana's new law which grants business owners the right to discriminate in the name of "religious freedom," by defending the law ... so long as the business owner practicing the discrimination is actually religious.

Under Beck's scenario, businesses are not allowed to discriminate against anybody unless the owners can adequately prove to the government that they are really living their faith and not just engaging in rank bigotry.

"This is the key here," Beck said. "You actually have to be religious. You can't just be somebody like 'I hate them gays so I'm not going to do it.' No, tell me a little bit about your religion."

Beck said that members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), for instance, which recently voted to allow its pastors to preside over same-sex marriages, wouldn't be allowed to deny their services to a gay couple.

"Sorry dude, you're making a wedding cake because you say you belong to this church [and] they happen to agree with it," Beck said.

"Show me about how you're living your life in your church," he said. "If you're living your faith, well then I can't say anything about it since its your religious right. And gay people have to get over it. And anybody else who might be bigoted and you own a bakery — I don't want to sell anyone them cookies — well, dude, you have to and that's just the way it is. You need to get over it":

Suppose for a moment that Beck's standard was actually adopted and government officials were tasked with determining whether individual business owners are "living their faith" enough to qualify for this exemption and then just try to imagine the screams of outrage that would ring out from Beck and other Religious Right activists once the state started denying such exemptions because it had determined that the people in question just weren't religious enough.

As we noted yesterday, after several days of controversy, Colorado state legislator Gordon Klingenschmitt finally apologized for having said last week that a brutal attack on a pregnant woman in the state was due to the "curse of God upon America" for legal abortion.

But it seems that his apology is not making the controversy go away, as yesterday the Republican leader in the Colorado House of Representatives stripped Klingenschmitt of one of his two committee assignments as punishment for his statement:

The leader of the House Republicans on Monday stripped Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt from one of his two committee posts, saying the lawmaker's "curse of God" comments about a woman whose fetus was ripped from her womb were in "poor taste" and "insensitive."

Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso said he removed Klingenschmitt from the Health, Insurance and Environment Committee because he believed "there needed to be some kind of disciplinary action."

"This is one of the few tools I have in my toolbox, and this seemed like the appropriate course of action," said DelGrosso, a Loveland Republican.

Klingenschmitt, of course, is not happy with the move and is complaining that he is being unfairly persecuted for quoting the Bible and being a Christian:

Now The Denver Post reports that because I quoted unpopular Bible verses from the pulpit in my Sunday ministry, the legislative branch of the Colorado government will remove me from a committee.

While I respect his position, I disagree with Leader Brian DelGrosso's decision, because it clearly establishes an unprecedented religious litmus test for which representatives can sit on what committees.

I was not driving drunk, I was not arrested by the police, I am literally being punished for quoting unpopular Bible verses in my Sunday church, or interpreting the Old Testament differently than Leader DelGrosso interprets it, during my private ministry outside the Capitol. Is that suddenly a crime?

This is not the first time that a branch of the government has reached into my chapel and punished me for my sermons. It also happened when I was a chaplain in the Navy in 2005. That unlawful punishment helped launch 300,000 petitions and I was eventually vindicated by Congress, because their voters demanded religious freedom. Will we?

Here in Colorado, officials can't claim we have freedom to preach, then levy government punishments for doing that. That endangers everybody's religious freedom.

The government is now forcing me to choose between obeying God on Sunday, and representing the people Monday through Friday. That's a hard choice. I want to do both, but party leaders are essentially saying I cannot.

But realizing that the comments he made on his television show have "begun to overshadow" his role as a state legislator, Klingenschmitt announced that he is suspending his ministry and TV program until the end of the state legislative session:

I therefore announce that I will suspend my Christian preaching ministry for the next six weeks, and I will take a Sabbatical from my television show until the end of this legislative session. We will air a few more new programs created this week, but starting next week we plan to only air TV re-runs until the end of the legislative session on May 7th.

Gov. Nikki Haley will be delivering a welcome message to David Lane's next "The Response" prayer rally in South Carolina in June.

Matt Barber says that he "has had the distinct honor of visiting" with Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz. That fact alone probably ought to disqualify each one of these men from ever becoming president.

Jennifer LeClaire warns that "a tsunami of perversion and all manner of wicked sin is headed toward this nation."

Don Boys declares that "the Bible can never mean what it was not written to mean and if the homosexual juggernaut continues then America will become Sodom with electric lights, television, cell phones, smog, and Interstates."

Joel C. Rosenberg cautions that "on top of all America's national challenges and sins, including 58 million abortions, we dare not also abandon or turn against Israel and the Jewish people. If we do, we will seal our fate and face the judgment of God."

Finally, Bryan Fischer spent a segment on his radio show today promoting the entirely baseless right-wing theory that Sen. Harry Reid's injuries were the result of him having been beaten up by the mafia.

So passionate is Fischer's defense of the new law that he went so far as to declare on his radio program today that the law does actually not sanction discrimination against gays but merely protects Christians from discrimination.

"This law is not something that provides for discrimination against gays," he said. "It is something that prevents discrimination against Christians ... This thing is an anti-discrimination bill because it prohibits governmental discrimination against Christians in the state of Indiana."

Fischer went on to declare that gay rights activists are seeking to utterly destroy religious freedom in America, saying that outrage over the law is entirely about "homosexual supremacy."

"Homosexual activists want special rights for homosexuals to trump every other single right that any American possess anywhere, at any time, in any place," he said.

So a law passed in order to give religious business owners a special legal right to discriminate against gay customers is, in Fischer's warped worldview, really an anti-discrimination bill need to protect Christian business owners from having to give gay customers "special rights" by treating them equally: